Within collective epistemology, there is a class of theories that understand the epistemic status of collective attitude ascriptions, such as ‘the college union knows that the industrial action is going to plan’, or ‘the jury justifiedly believes that the suspect is guilty’, as saying that a sufficient subset of group member attitudes have the relevant epistemic status. In this paper, I will demonstrate that these summativist approaches to collective epistemology are incompatible with epistemic permissivism, the doctrine that a single body (...) of evidence may rationalize multiple doxastic attitudes. In particular, I will make use of epistemic permissivism to provide a general recipe for generating so-called divergence cases, which demonstrate situations in which rationality requires group-level and member-level attitudes to diverge. I will call this class of cases permissive divergence cases. While other divergence cases have been discussed in the literature, permissive divergence cases prove themselves to be less susceptible to many of the worries raised against their competitors, while being directly built on an often-defended epistemological thesis. (shrink)

Among the most striking developments in the process of economic transition has been the very diverse paths these economies have taken with respect to income distribution, with some maintaining degrees of equality similar to the socialist era while others now exhibit degrees of inequality noticeably greater than any advanced market capitalist economies. We argue that these outcomes reflect divergent dynamics with multiple equilibria wherein the pattern of income distribution interacts with the level of corruption and the breakdown of the public (...) sector and social safety nets, with the possibility of societies going sharply in one direction or another. This argument is supported by empirical data linking income inequality and measures of the size of the unofficial economy in a set of fifteen transitional economies. (shrink)

Coalescent argumentation is a normative ideal that involves the joining together of two disparate claims through recognition and exploration of opposing positions. By uncovering the crucial connection between a claim and the attitudes, beliefs, feelings, values and needs to which it is connected dispute partners are able to identify points of agreement and disagreement. These points can then be utilized to effect coalescence, a joining or merging of divergent positions, by forming the basis for a mutual investigation of non-conflictual options (...) that might otherwise have remained unconsidered. The essay proceeds by defining and discussing ‘argument’, ‘position’ and ‘understanding’. These notions are then brought together to outline the concept of coalescent reasoning. (shrink)

Migration is a recurrent phenomenon of human history because it is a successful adaptive strategy of human beings. Although migration today is not of a greater magnitude than in the past, it attracts a great deal of media and academia attention. The present wave of non-Western immigrants into the United States and Europe caused, apart from myriad economic, social and political problems, an ideological dispute between globalism and right-wing populism. Both ideological approaches attract many zealots who spread extreme opinions and (...) poison the whole political life. Using the scholastic method, I examined some opposing points of view of globalists and right-wing populists on several topics regarding non-Western immigration: border control, illegal immigration, limitations of legal immigration, refugee relocation quotas and cultural integration of immigrants. The globalists’ and right-wing populists’ theses and arguments were checked in regard with established authorities, available factual data and human reason. Highlighting some important topics relating to immigration problem and weighing the main arguments used by globalists and right-wing populists, I also indicate several points of compromise that could help people to moderate their political opinions. (shrink)

This article argues that centralized wage bargaining alters the causal logic in explanations of wage inequality, in the sense that common explanatory factors have different effects, given the degree of bargaining centralization. The evidence presented supports the theoretical argument. Using aggregate time-series cross-country data from fifteen capitalist democracies, the article shows that—given decentralized bargaining—trade with less developed countries, resources devoted to research and development, and government employment have inegalitarian effects on the wage distribution, whereas leftist governments and unionism compress wages. (...) However, given centralized wage bargaining these effects gradually disappear or, in some cases, change direction. (shrink)

In a series of articles and in a recent book, What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor has objected to Darwin’s principle of natural selection on the grounds that it assumes nature has intentions.1 Despite the near universal rejection of Fodor’s argument by biologists and philosophers of biology (myself included),2 I now believe he was almost right. I will show this through a historical examination of a principle that Darwin thought as important as natural selection, his principle of divergence. The (...) principle was designed to explain a phenomenon obvious to any observer of nature, namely, that animals and plants form a hierarchy of clusters. Theodosius Dobzhansky made this the motivating observation of his great synthesizing work, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937): “the living world is not a single array of individuals in which any two variants are connected by a series of intergrades, but an array of more or less distinctly separate arrays, intermediates between which are absent or at least rare. . . Small.. (shrink)

Written by experts in the field, this volume presents a comprehensive investigation into the relationship between argumentation theory and the philosophy of mathematical practice. Argumentation theory studies reasoning and argument, and especially those aspects not addressed, or not addressed well, by formal deduction. The philosophy of mathematical practice diverges from mainstream philosophy of mathematics in the emphasis it places on what the majority of working mathematicians actually do, rather than on mathematical foundations. -/- The book begins by first challenging the (...) assumption that there is no role for informal logic in mathematics. Next, it details the usefulness of argumentation theory in the understanding of mathematical practice, offering an impressively diverse set of examples, covering the history of mathematics, mathematics education and, perhaps surprisingly, formal proof verification. From there, the book demonstrates that mathematics also offers a valuable testbed for argumentation theory. Coverage concludes by defending attention to mathematical argumentation as the basis for new perspectives on the philosophy of mathematics. ​. (shrink)

GREGORY MIKKELSON | : Animal and environmental ethics should converge on the following three value judgments: natural ecosystems generally involve more good than harm; predation in nature tends to yield positive net benefits; and, at least on a global scale, livestock farming is destroying more value than it is creating. But the ecocentric criteria of environmental ethics and the sentientist criteria of animal ethics may have divergent implications for capitalism’s main effect on the world: the collapse of wild nature due (...) to explosive growth in the human economy. Sentientism risks counting this effect as a net gain, whereas ecocentrism surely rates it a massive net loss. While supporting the above claims, I show how they fit into a larger argument in favour of the broader, ecocentric value theory of environmental ethics and against the narrower, sentientist axiology of animal ethics. | : Les éthiques animale et environnementale devraient converger vers les trois jugements de valeur suivants: les écosystèmes naturels impliquent généralement plus de bien que de mal, la prédation dans la nature a tendance à produire des avantages nets positifs et, au moins à l’échelle mondiale, l’élevage animal détruit plus de valeur qu’il n’en crée. Mais les critères écocentriques de l’éthique environnementale et les critères de l’éthique animale fondés sur la sentience pourraient avoir des implications divergentes sur l’effet principal du capitalisme sur le monde: l’effondrement de la nature sauvage dû à la croissance explosive de l’économie humaine. Le sentientisme risque de considérer cet effet comme un gain net, alors que l’écocentrisme le considère sûrement comme une perte nette massive. Tout en soutenant les affirmations ci-dessus, je montre comment elles s’intègrent dans un argument plus large en faveur d’une théorie de la valeur écocentrique plus englobante propre à l’éthique environnementale et contre l’axiologie sentientiste plus étroite de l’éthique animale. (shrink)

This article proposes a neo-Polanyian theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics within contemporary market societies. It uses this framework to analyze the divergence between the United States and other developed societies that has become more pronounced in the first years of the twenty-first century. The argument emphasizes the shifting political alliances of the business community in the United States and suggests that from 1994 onward, business lost power in the right-wing coalition to its religious Right allies. The growing power (...) of a religious-based social movement is a critical ingredient in the unilateralist turn in the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. (shrink)

Structured around Charles S. Peirce's three-fold categorical scheme, this article proposes a comparative study of Ayn Rand and Peirce's realist views in general metaphysics. Rand's stance is seen as diverging with Peirce's argument from asymptotic representation but converging with arguments from brute relation and neutral category. It is argued that, by dismissing traditional subject-object dualisms, Rand and Peirce both propose iconoclastic construals of what it means to be real, dismissals made all the more noteworthy by the fact each chose (...) to ground them in indissoluble triads of self-evident first principles. (shrink)

This article assesses the potential for basic income to become a tool for empowering women in the household and in the workplace. Recent debates among feminist political theorists indicate that it is not obvious whether basic income has the potential to push our society toward greater socioeconomic gender justice. I show that arguments for and against basic income put forward by feminist theorists rely on implicit assumptions about how women's work should be conceived—assumptions that are not shared among all (...) of them. I also argue that these beliefs can be sorted into two dichotomies: one concerned with the suitability of remuneration for caregiving, the other with the question of who should be responsible for caregiving. I conclude by explaining the possible causes of the divergences in the views of feminist supporters and critics of UBI, and by recommending ways to arrive at common conceptual grounds. (shrink)

Rorty claims argument is inherently conservative and philosophical progress comes from "sparkling new ideas," not argument. This assumes an untenable opposition between the generation and the evaluation of ideas, with argument relegated to evaluation. New ideas that contribute to progress arise from critical reflection on problems posed by the tradition, and constrained by the criteria governing evaluation. Thinking directed toward the criticism and evaluation of ideas or products is not algorithmic; it has a generative, creative component. An overall assessment in (...) any complex circumstance requires constructing a new view from the questioning, weighing, rejecting, reconciling, and integrating of numerous divergent points of view. Thus, the process of argumentation can issue in new ideas. (shrink)

Many individual sentient wild animals are vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. In this article, I suggest that animal ethicists who take sentient animals’ moral status seriously are likely to agree that, other things being equal, we have moral responsibilities to assist wild animals made vulnerable to climate change. However, I also argue that these ethicists are likely to diverge in terms of the strategies they believe would actually fulfil such moral responsibilities, depending on whether their primary concern is rectificatory justice (...) or duties of beneficence. To support this argument, I consider three plausible strategies for helping wild animals vulnerable to climate change: rescue and rehabilitation, habitat restoration, and assisted migration. I argue that different theoretical approaches to animal ethics are likely to diverge on aspects of all these strategies. These differences mean that the process of creating wide agreement among animal ethicists on climate adaptation strategies to assist vulnerable wild animals faces significant hurdles. (shrink)

This article discusses the historical similarities and differences between Schroedinger's and de Broglie's ideas on wave mechanics and gives a biographical account of their scientific relationship. Their arguments over questions such as quantum jumps, the viability of particles within wave mechanics theory, and the inclusion of space, time, and relativity in quantum mechanics are analyzed. The final section of the paper considers the overall role of Schroedinger's ideas in modern quantum mechanics.

The author defends the ancient claim that justice is at bottom a body of social conventions. Recent analytical and empirical concepts and results from the social sciences together with insights and arguments of past masters of moral and political philosophy are integrated into a new game-theoretic conventionalist analysis of justice.

We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God’s existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords (...) a response to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

The truthmaker literature has recently come to the consensus that the logic of truthmaking is distinct from classical propositional logic. This development has huge implications for the free will literature. Since free will and moral responsibility are primarily ontological concerns (and not semantic concerns) the logic of truthmaking ought to be central to the free will debate. I shall demonstrate that counterexamples to transfer principles employed in the direct argument occur precisely where a plausible logic of truthmaking diverges from classical (...) logic. Further, restricted transfer principles (like the ones employed by McKenna, Stump, and Warfield) are as problematic as the original formulation of the direct argument. (shrink)

How to understand and assess arguments in which the popularity of an opinion is put forward as a reason to accept that opinion? There exist widely diverging views on how to analyse and evaluate such arguments from popularity. First, I define the concept of an argument from popularity, and show that typical appeals to the popularity of a policy are not genuine arguments from popularity. Second, I acknowledge the importance of some recent probability-based accounts according to which (...) some arguments from popularity are epistemically strong arguments, but also contend that despite these strengths such arguments have at most limited value in argumentative discussions. Finally, I show that there are at least five different ways that arguments from popularity can be fallacious, and examine what this means for an account of the Fallacy of Popularity. (shrink)

If the most familiar overlapping interpretation of Everettian quantum mechanics is correct, then each of us is constantly splitting into multiple people. This consequence gives rise to the quantum doomsday argument, which threatens to draw crippling epistemic consequences from EQM. However, a diverging interpretation of EQM undermines the quantum doomsday argument completely. This appears to tell in favour of the diverging interpretation. But it is surprising that a metaphysical question that is apparently underdetermined by the physics should be settled by (...) purely epistemological considerations; and I argue that the positive case for divergence based on the quantum doomsday effect is ultimately unsuccessful. I discuss how some influential treatments of Everettian confirmation handle the quantum doomsday puzzle, and suggest that it can most satisfyingly be resolved via a naturalistic approach to the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

Competitor pressure is one of the major reasons that a SME engages in environmentally friendly or damaging activities. Extant research has argued that environmental strengths and concerns have mirror opposite relationships with stakeholder antecedents as well as with performance outcomes. We suggest this argument does not reflect the reality. Building on stakeholder management and Red Queen theories, we hypothesize that environmental strengths and concerns have differential relationships with competitors–firm power exchange and financial performance for Chinese SMEs. Results of ten interviews, (...) a pretest, and a large-scale field study indicate that competitors–firm power divergence has a positive relationship with environmental strengths, yet the link between this divergence and environmental concerns does not exist. Further, environmental strengths mediate the relationship between competitors–firm power divergence and financial performance of Chinese SMEs. (shrink)

The paper introduces a new model of argumentation, the Mixed Game Model, that no longer separates rule-governed competence from actual performance but starts from human beings and their ability of competence-in-performance. Human beings are able to orientate themselves in ever-changing surroundings and to negotiate diverging views in argumentative action games. Argumentation is thus described as a mixed game played by human beings according to principles of probability. These principles include constitutive, regulative and executive principles. Constitutive Principles focus on the basic (...) components of the game, that is, action, dialogue, and coherence as the interplay of different communicative means. Regulative Principles mediate between correlated human abilities and interests. Executive Principles guide the sequencing of action according to cognitive strategies. The mixed game no longer rests on pre-established harmony but describes performance as a non-equilibrial process of negotiation that mediates between order and disorder and is based on the integration of various parameters such as rationality, reason, persuasion and emotion. How the model works is exemplified by an analysis of part of a debate in the European Parliament. (shrink)

We propose in this paper DIAL, a framework for inter-agents dialogue, which formalize a collective decision-making process to compose divergent interests and perspectives. This framework bounds a dialectics system in which argumentative agents play and arbitrate to reach an agreement. For this purpose, we propose an argumentation-based reasoning to manage the conflicts between arguments having different strengths for different agents. Moreover, we propose a model of argumentative agents which justify the hypothesis to which they commit and take into account (...) the commitments of their interlocutors according to their reputations. In the scope of our dialectics system, a third agent is responsible of the final decision outcome which is taken by resolving the conflict between two players according to their competences and the advanced arguments. (shrink)

In naturally occuring argumentation, words which play a crucial role in the argument often acquire different meanings on subsequent occasions of use. Traditionally, such semantic shifts have been dealt with by the ‘fallacy of equivocation’. In my paper, I would like to show that there is considerably more to semantic shifts during arguments than their potentially being fallacious. Based on an analysis of a debate on environmental policy, I will argue that shifts in meaning are produced by a principle (...) I call ‘local semantic elaboration’. I will go on to show that semantic shifts in the meaning of a word, the position advocated by a party, and the questions that the parties raise during an argumentative process are neatly tailored to one another, but can be incommensurable to the opponent's views. Semantic shifts thus may have a dissociative impact on a critical discussion. By linking the structure of argumentation to its pragmatics, however, it may be revealed that there are two practices that account for a higher order of coherence of the debate. The first practice is a general preference for disagreeing with the opponent, the second practice is the interpretation of local speech acts in terms of an overall ideological stance that is attributed to the speaker. Because of these practices, parties do not criticize divergent semantic conceptions as disruptive, but they treat them as characteristic and sometimes even metonymic reflections of the parties' positions. (shrink)

The common discourse on intellectual property rights rests mainly on utilitarian ground, with implications on the question of justice as well as moral significance. It runs like this: Intellectual property rights are to reward the originators for his/her intellectual labour mainly in monetary terms, thereby providing incentives for originators to engage in future innovative labouring. Without such incentives, few, if not none, will engage in creative activities and the whole human community will, thereby, suffer because of reduced inventions. However, such (...) utilitarian argument on piracy as de-motivation may not be necessarily justified. In fact, intellectual property arrangement is one among different institutions concerning how the society may handle new ideas and creative works. In reality, private ownership over one's intellectual product is merely a modern western concept that is being ' advertised' as being normative, which, by itself, is highly debatable. Alarming still, such normative argument assumes both justness and moral dimensions. This article will analyse whether such argument is philosophically sound. (shrink)

This article highlights that in our rush to call for the democratization of science and expertise we must not forget to speak to what type of democratization we are calling for. In short, not all participatory forms are the same. In developing this argument, I examine one such form that has yet to receive much attention from science and technology studies scholars: the agricultural field day. In examining the field day, we find that its orientation—that is, toward either the conventional (...) or sustainable model of agriculture—shapes significantly its democratic approach to knowledge coproduction. To help inform how we understand conventional and sustainable field days, I turned to two conceptual frameworks of participation: namely, that of Wynne and Funtowicz and Ravetz. In doing this, we find that conventional field days mirror closely that form of public participation detailed by Funtowicz and Ravetz, while sustainable field days reflect that conceptualized by Wynne. (shrink)

In the first chapter of his book Truth and Objectivity (1992), Crispin Wright puts forward what he regards as ‘a fundamental and decisive objection’ to deflationism about truth (p. 21). His objection proceeds by an argument to the conclusion that truth and warranted assertibility coincide in normative force and potentially diverge in extension ( I call this the ‘argument from neutrality’). This argument has already received some attention. However, I do not believe that it has been fully understood yet. In (...) this short paper, I shall assess the cogency of Wright’s objection in some detail. My agenda is as follows. First, I give what I believe to be an adequate rendering of the objection. Secondly, I reveal the real force of the neutrality argument and say thirdly why it does not, as Wright thinks, refute deflationism. Finally, I argue that Wright’s insistence that truth is a ‘substantial property’ is uncongenial to the overall project of his book. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Moral Duty to Assist Others in Their Health Care Health Care Should Be Provided by the Government The Duty to Provide Truly Universal Health Care Rejecting the Liberal Model.

This chapter aims to discuss critically the changing values in higher education within the context of culturally, ethnically and religiously plural modern European societies with a special focus on the case of emerging European Islamic higher education institutions. The inquiry argues for the need to rethink the core values in Islamic and western liberal, secular higher education in order to facilitate a new creative engagement between these two distinctive perspectives on higher education that share an intertwined intellectual legacy. The focus (...) of the study is framed by the following questions: Do central educational values of Islam and western secular higher education remain in conflict? To what extent can a critical dialogue of convergence be facilitated between the educational/pedagogic cultures of Islamic and western higher education? Why should such a critical engagement be based on a shared relational ethics of respecting the dignity of difference and recognition of mutual interdependence? The study adopts a phenomenology- infomed critical, comparative analysis method while exploring the topic within its historical and contempoaray dimensiosns. The original contribution of the inquiry lies in its reflective engagement with the Islamic and western values of higher education and developing a distinctive conceptual framework to facilitate a new pedagogic dialogue among the communities of learners and teachers coming from these educational cultures who increasingly share the same social space. After presenting the aims and context of the inquiry, a brief historical account of Islamic and western values of higher education will be provided. This will be followed by discussing the arguments supporting the incompatibility of Islamic and western values of education. The incompatibility thesis will be deconstructed by critically examining its logic of binary literalism. By drawing on the evidence suggesting presence of a shared reflective, critical educational heritage between Islam and the West, the chapter argues for the need to revive these forgotten traditions of pedagogic curiosity and critical openness to inspire a new cross-pollinating dialogue capable of acknowledging the dignity of being different and recognizing the reality of sharing an interdependent world. (shrink)

Objective: To survey members of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and of the Society for Medical Decision Making to elicit the similarities and differences in their reasoning about two clinical cases that involved ethical dilemmas.Cases: Case 1 was that of a patient refusing treatment that a surgeon thought would be beneficial. Case 2 dealt with end-of-life care. The argument was whether intensive treatment should be continued of an unconscious patient with multiorgan failure.Method: Four questions, with structured multiple alternatives, (...) were asked about each case: identified core problems, needed additional information, appropriate next steps and who the decision maker should be.Observations and results: Substantial similarities were noticed between the two groups in identifying the core problems, the information needed and the appropriate next steps. SMDM members gave more weight to outcomes and trade-offs and ASBH members had patient autonomy trump other considerations more strongly. In case 1, more than 60% of ASBH respondents identified the patient alone as the decision maker, whereas members of SMDM were almost evenly divided between having the patient as the solo decision maker or preferring a group of some sort as the decision maker, a significant difference . In case 2, both groups agreed that the question of discontinuing treatment should be discussed with the family and that the family alone should not be the decision maker.Conclusion: Despite distinctively different methods of case analysis and little communication between the two professional communities, many similarities were observed in the actual decisions they reached on the two clinical dilemmas. (shrink)

Hegel presents two very different accounts of the initial categorization of essence in his Science of Logic and his later Encyclopedia Logic, thereby raising the question of whether this discrepancy undermines the univocal necessity of systematic logic. A close examination of these arguments reveals that the Science of Logic account captures a necessary ordering that is incompletely presented in the Encyclopedia. The details are provided for comprehending why the logic of essence must begin with a contrast of the essential (...) and the unessential, how this reverts to illusory being, and why identity depends upon the transformation of refl ection from being positing to being external to being determining in character. Significantly, the self-developing nature of these logical developments calls into question the foundationalism entailed by any privileging of the categories of essence. (shrink)

In a number of writings, Cass Sunstein has argued that we should use cost-benefit analysis as our primary approach to risk management, because cost-benefit analysis corrects for the cognitive biases that mar our thinking about risk. The paper critically evaluates this ‘cognitive argument for cost-benefit analysis’ and finds it wanting. Once we make distinctions between different cognitive errors and between different aspects of cost-benefit analysis, it becomes apparent that there are really two cognitive arguments, neither of which is successful (...) as arguments for cost-benefit analysis as a whole. One argument shows that the analysis aspect of cost-benefit analysis is warranted because it corrects for false beliefs about the magnitudes of risk and for the neglect of some costs. While this is a sound argument, it does not provide an argument for other aspects of cost-benefit analysis. The second argument purports to show that commensurating and monetizing the values of the effects of regulation is warranted because it corrects for the use of widely diverging values of a statistical life. This argument fails because the use of widely diverging values of a statistical life is not a cognitive error: It is neither precluded by considerations of instrumental rationality, nor by the requirement of treating like cases alike. (shrink)

The nation is usually taken to be an expression, and ?nationalism? a defence, of culture. But we may have sanguinary national conflict (as in Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia) where cultural difference is small; and we may have minimal conflict (as in Switzerland or Belgium) where cultural difference is great. This essay proposes a shift, away from seeing nations as grounded in culture, to seeing them as grounded in ?identity? ? often forged by historical forces having nothing to do (...) with culture per se. This essay rejects a cultural argument for liberal nationalism (associated with the work of Raz, Miller and Kymlicka among others) precisely because it confounds national identity with common culture. Since nations diverge despite a common culture, ?common culture? cannot explain them. Identity is more fundamental. It persists where culture changes. (shrink)

Gorgias’ On Not-Being survives only in two divergent summaries. Diels–Kranz's classic edition prints the better-preserved version that appears in Sextus’ Aduersus Mathematicos. Yet, in recent years there has been rising interest in a second summary that survives as part of the anonymous De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia. The text of MXG is more difficult; it contains substantial lacunae that often make it much harder to make grammatical let alone philosophical sense of. As Alexander Mourelatos reports, one manuscript has a scribal note (...) that reads: ‘The original contains many errors; no one should blame me; I just copy what I see.’2 The treatise's state of preservation has aptly prompted Michael Gagarin to liken it to a black hole: ‘something we cannot see directly but know must exist because of certain effects it has on other objects.’3. (shrink)

Millions of people in the developing world lack access to curative drugs. Pogge identifies the cause of this problem as a lack of redistribution across borders. In contrast, this article shows that institutional shortcomings within developing countries are the main issue. These different explanations are the result of diverging analytic approaches to ethics: a cosmopolitan approach versus an ordonomic approach. This article compares both approaches with regard to how they conceptualize and propose to solve the problem of providing life-saving pharmaceuticals (...) to the poor in developing countries. (shrink)

BackgroundRespect for autonomy is a key concept in contemporary bioethics and end-of-life ethics in particular. Despite this status, an individualistic interpretation of autonomy is being challenged from the perspective of different theoretical traditions. Many authors claim that the principle of respect for autonomy needs to be reconceptualised starting from a relational viewpoint. Along these lines, the notion of relational autonomy is attracting increasing attention in medical ethics. Yet, others argue that relational autonomy needs further clarification in order to be adequately (...) operationalised for medical practice. To this end, we examined the meaning, foundations, and uses of relational autonomy in the specific literature of end-of-life care ethics.MethodsUsing PRESS and PRISMA procedures, we conducted a systematic review of argument-based ethics publications in 8 major databases of biomedical, philosophy, and theology literature that focused on relational autonomy in end-of-life care. Full articles were screened. All included articles were critically appraised, and a synthesis was produced.ResultsFifty publications met our inclusion criteria. Twenty-eight articles were published in the last 5 years; publications were originating from 18 different countries. Results are organized according to: (a) an individualistic interpretation of autonomy; (b) critiques of this individualistic interpretation of autonomy; (c) relational autonomy as theoretically conceptualised; (d) relational autonomy as applied to clinical practice and moral judgment in end-of-life situations.ConclusionsThree main conclusions were reached. First, literature on relational autonomy tends to be more a ‘reaction against’ an individualistic interpretation of autonomy rather than be a positive concept itself. Dichotomic thinking can be overcome by a deeper development of the philosophical foundations of autonomy. Second, relational autonomy is a rich and complex concept, formulated in complementary ways from different philosophical sources. New dialogue among traditionally divergent standpoints will clarify the meaning. Third, our analysis stresses the need for dialogical developments in decision making in end-of-life situations. Integration of these three elements will likely lead to a clearer conceptualisation of relational autonomy in end-of-life care ethics. This should in turn lead to better decision-making in real-life situations. (shrink)

Robert Fogelin claims that interlocutors must share a framework of background beliefs and commitments in order to fruitfully pursue argument. I refute Fogelin’s claim by investigating more thoroughly the shared background required for productive argument. I find that this background consists not in any common beliefs regarding the topic at hand, but rather in certain shared pro-cedural commitments and competencies. I suggest that Fogelin and his supporters mistakenly view shared beliefs as part of the required background for productive argument because (...) these procedural com-mitments become more difficult to uphold when people’s beliefs diverge widely regarding the topic at hand. (shrink)

Slippery slope arguments are commonly thought to be fallacious. But is there a single fallacy which they all commit? A study of applied logic texts reveals competing diagnoses of the supposed error, and several recent authors take slippery slope arguments seriously. Clearly, there is room for comment. I shall give evidence of divergence on the question of what sort of argument constitutes a slippery slope, distinguish four different types of argument which have all been deemed to be (...) slippery slopes, and contend that two of these types need involve no logical error.We find in textbook accounts three quite differently oriented treatments of slippery slope: conceptual — relating to vagueness and the ancient sorites paradox; precedential — relating to the need to treat similar cases consistently; and causal — relating to the avoidance of actions which will, or would be likely to, set off a series of undersirable events. (shrink)

The “No Miracle Argument” for scientific realism contends that the only plausible explanation for the predictive success of scientific theories is their truthlikeness, but doesn’t specify what ‘truthlikeness’ means. I argue that if we understand ‘truthlikeness’ in terms of Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, the resulting realist thesis (RKL) is a plausible explanation for science’s success. Still, RKL probably falls short of the realist’s ideal. I argue, however, that the strongest version of realism that the argument can plausibly establish is RKL. (...) The realist needs another argument for establishing a stronger realist thesis. (shrink)

Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments involve unusual cases. We present empirical reasons to doubt the reliability of intuitive judgments and conclusions about such cases. Inferences and intuitions prompted by verbal case descriptions are influenced by routine comprehension processes which invoke stereotypes. We build on psycholinguistic findings to determine conditions under which the stereotype associated with the most salient sense of a word predictably supports inappropriate inferences from descriptions of unusual (stereotype-divergent) cases. We conduct an experiment that combines plausibility (...) ratings with pupillometry to document this “salience bias.” We find that under certain conditions, competent speakers automatically make stereotypical inferences they know to be inappropriate. (shrink)

As Leibniz points out in the Méditation sur la notion commune de la jus tice, justice—defined as charity of the wise and universal benevolence—belongs “to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things, as numbers and proportions.” According to the interpretation of Patrick Riley, from this perspective the two manuscripts usually regarded as belonging to the Méditation should be seen as complementary parts of a unitary Platonizing work. According to Riley, the manuscript that now constitutes the first part (...) of the Méditation is concerned with definitions of ethical concepts viewed as “quasi-mathematical, demonstrable ‘eternal verities’”, whereas the manuscript that now constitutes the second part of the Méditation is concerned “with Platonic ‘ascent’, in the manner of Phaedrus and Symposium,” which recommends the transition from mere negative forbearance from harm to doing positive good. In formulating these claims, Riley uses scare quotes to indicate that he uses the terms “eternal verities” and “ascent” in an unusual way that diverges from the views of the historical Plato. According to his interpretation, Leibniz’s modifications of Platonism are restricted to peripheral parts such as the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul or Pythagorean components such as the doctrine of metempsychosis. Therefore, Riley claims that when Leibniz is talking about knowing eternal truths, what he has in mind is literally the view that we know the same truths as the truths that the gods know and love but do not cause or change. (shrink)

This essay deals with a selected part of an epistemological controversy provided by Tūsī in response to the skeptical arguments reported by Rāzī that is related to what might be called "intellectual skepticism," or skepticism regarding the judgments of the intellect, particularly in connection with self-evident principles. It will be shown that Rāzī has cited and exposed a position that seems to be no less than a medieval version of empiricism. Tūsī, in contrast, has presented us with a position (...) that rejects such empiricism. The comparative aim of this essay is to draw attention to some similarities as well as some points of divergence between the kind of skeptical debate we are focusing on here, and some relevant epistemological discussions in the later traditions in the West. ". (shrink)

Moral abolitionists claim that morality ought to be abolished. According to one of their most prominent arguments, this is because making moral judgments renders people significantly less tolerant toward anyone who holds divergent views. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that morality’s tolerance-decreasing effect only occurs if people are realists about moral issues, i.e., they interpret these issues as objectively grounded. We found support for this hypothesis (Studies 1 and 2). Yet, it also turned out that the intolerance (...) associated with realism is mediated by moral conviction and perceived consensus. People tend to feel more strongly about those moral issues they ground objectively and, in doing so, are more prone to display the vice of moral smugness toward those who disagree with them. The remedy for this that has been recommended is humility which we found (Study 3) is indeed related to reduced intolerance, in part by predicting a reduction in realism, but also in part through a direct connection to intolerance. These results put pressure on abolitionists’ “argument from intolerance.”. (shrink)

The relevance of different concepts of computer software (henceforth SW) rights is analysed from the viewpoint of divergent sociopolitical doctrines. The question of software rights is considered from the ontological assumptions, on one extreme, to the relevance of current practical applications of SW rights (such as copyright and patent), on the other extreme. It will be argued (from a non-descriptive/non-cognitive account) that the current expression of SW rights in Western societies (namely copyright, excluding patent) can be seen to be fair (...) from the viewpoint of the theses of agreed rights and universalisability. Finally, given that such practice is neither immoral, nor irrelevant-but fair (based on the ad ignorantiam argument)-we have good reason to respect it rather than violate or demolish it. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This is a pre-print. Please cite only the revised published version. This paper presents an original, ambitious, truth-directed transcendental argument for the existence of an ‘external world’. It begins with a double-headed starting-point: Stroud’s own remarks on the necessary conditions of language in general, and Hegel’s critique of the “fear of error.” The paper argues that the sceptical challenge requires a particular critical concept of thought as that which may diverge from reality, and that this (...) concept is possible only through reflection on situations of error, in which how things are thought to be diverges from how things really are with independent items in an objective world. The existence of such a world is therefore a necessary condition of the possibility of scepticism: such scepticism is therefore false. I defend the argument against objections from Stroud’s sceptic and others. Drawing on Heidegger, the paper concludes by indicating that the chain of necessary conditions includes practical engagement with the world. (shrink)

Bayesians take “definite” or “single-case” probabilities to be basic. Definite probabilities attach to closed formulas or propositions. We write them here using small caps: PROB(P) and PROB(P/Q). Most objective probability theories begin instead with “indefinite” or “general” probabilities (sometimes called “statistical probabilities”). Indefinite probabilities attach to open formulas or propositions. We write indefinite probabilities using lower case “prob” and free variables: prob(Bx/Ax). The indefinite probability of an A being a B is not about any particular A, but rather about the (...) property of being an A. In this respect, its logical form is the same as that of relative frequencies. For instance, we might talk about the probability of a human baby being female. That probability is about human babies in general — not about individuals. If we examine a baby and determine conclusively that she is female, then the definite probability of her being female is 1, but that does not alter the indefinite probability of human babies in general being female. Most objective approaches to probability tie probabilities to relative frequencies in some way, and the resulting probabilities have the same logical form as the relative frequencies. That is, they are indefinite probabilities. The simplest theories identify indefinite probabilities with relative frequencies.3 It is often objected that such “finite frequency theories” are inadequate because our probability judgments often diverge from relative frequencies. For example, we can talk about a coin being fair (and so the indefinite probability of a flip landing heads is 0.5) even when it is flipped only once and then destroyed (in which case the relative frequency is either 1 or 0). For understanding such indefinite probabilities, it has been suggested that we need a notion of probability that talks about possible instances of properties as well as actual instances.. (shrink)

The Tibetan Buddhist logician Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge devoted a large part of his discussion on argumentation to arguments by consequence. Phya pa distinguishes in his analysis arguments by consequence that merely refute the opponent and arguments by consequence that qualify as probative. The latter induce a correct direct proof which corresponds to the reverse form of the argument by consequence. This paper deals with Phya pa’s classification of probative consequences based on the type of (...) the logical reason involved. I first establish the basis of Phya pa’s classification—the typology of logical reasons in inference-for-oneself—with a special attention to logical reasons consisting in the ‘apprehension of something incompatible [with the negandum]’ and among them the specific case of the ‘apprehension of the cause of something incompatible [with the negandum]’. The treatment of the latter is shown to be instrumental in Phya pa’s classification, as well as in explaining the divergences that occur in the models adopted by his successors, such as gTsang nag pa brTson ʾgrus seng ge and mTshur ston gZhon nu seng ge. Turning to Phya pa’s effective application of this typology when he resorts himself to arguments by consequence, I examine Phya pa’s rephrasing, in the form of four arguments by consequence, of the discussion on the relation between the two realities found in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and relate it to a parallel discussion in an earlier Madhyamaka work by rGya dmar ba Byang chub grags. I compare the variant versions of these four arguments in three Madhyamaka works of Phya pa and show that the differences pertaining to the identification of the type of the logical reason result from apparently insignificant variations in the formulation of each of the arguments. In the conclusion, I discuss the potential philosophical or practical interest of such a classification. (shrink)

There are two tendencies in the arguments of the legitimacy of metaphysics in ancient China: the tendency to argue that there was no metaphysics in ancient China and the tendency to argue that ancient Chinese metaphysics is totally different from that of the West. In this article, the author counters these tendencies and argues that Chinese and western metaphysics both originated from a dynamic cosmology and shared objects of investigation and characteristics of thinking in terms of Becoming. However, in (...) their later development, due to the difference in the problems of their focus, traditions of "moral metaphysics" and "(natural) metaphysics of Being" were formed in China and in the West, respectively. The author also explores the reasons for the rise of modern science in the West and its lack of progress in China. (shrink)